The Blackhawks knew all day that Hossa might be sidelined by an upper-body injury, so they had time to plan for the contingency of playing without the 34-year-old. Ben Smith got the call to replace Hossa, but it really did not matter who came into the lineup instead.

In a series where the teams are so evenly matched, taking a player of Hossa's caliber out of the equation changes everything, just as it did for the Bruins when Nathan Horton had to leave Game 1 in overtime with a shoulder injury.

Playing almost exclusively against Chara, Hossa had a plus-31 Corsi rating over the first two games, while Chara was at minus-29. One of the most threatening offensive defensemen in the league was not getting in on the attack because he was so busy dealing with shot attempts from Hossa and his linemates. In Game 3, Chara's Corsi—the number of 5-on-5 shot attempts for and against the Bruins with him on the ice—was even. Chara also registered his first point since the second round, with an assist on Patrice Bergeron's power-play goal in the second period.

"It's something we were prepared for all day, that he might not play, so it happens," Toews said of Hossa. "Sometimes you're missing one of your best players, and you've got to find a way to play without him. We always say, it's an opportunity for other guys to step up, and the guys that got more ice time tonight played well."

That's nice of Toews to say, but his team was outplayed in every facet of the game, and nowhere more than on special teams, where the Bruins scored the first power-play goal of the series and held the Blackhawks scoreless on four attempts. Chicago is 0-for-10 in the series, and was lucky not to get burned for a first-period shorthanded goal on Monday after the puck rolled off Brad Marchand's stick. For the Blackhawks, if not for Corey Crawford's 33 saves, it would've been worse.

In addition to making things easier for Boston's top defensemen and penalty kill, Hossa's absence meant one less threat to Tuukka Rask, who made 28 saves in his third shutout of this year's playoffs.

"It starts with the goaltender," said Jaromir Jagr, who notched his eighth assist of the playoffs. "He gives us so much confidence. Even when we don't cover him and make him work, he's on top of it."

Jagr knocked the wood panel of his locker after saying that, although Rask doesn't seem to need any luck—nor were there many times on Monday that the goaltender had to bail out his teammates. Scoring chances were few and far between for Chicago, which had 17 of its 56 shot attempts blocked. That included six blocks by Seidenberg.

If there was one area where Hossa's absence did not come into play, it was in the faceoff circle, but even there, Boston had its best night yet, going 40-for-56, led by a 24-for-28 performance by Bergeron. Of those 28 draws, 10 were against Toews, and Bergeron won eight, making it even tougher for the Blackhawks' captain to find his offensive stride on a night playing with Michael Frolik and Marcus Kruger rather than his usual running mates, Hossa and Brandon Saad.

"There wasn't any change in our game," Bruins coach Claude Julien said. "As I mentioned the other day when I was asked about another individual player, we don't make our game plan based on an individual. I can definitely tell you they lost a pretty important player on their roster, but that doesn't mean they had to change our game."

They didn't have to. Hossa being out of the lineup changed Chicago's game, and with the Bruins on top of their game, it turned out that Game 3 was not much of a game.